


and all the king's horses and all the king's men

by Tonight_At_Noon



Category: Captain America (Movies), Marvel, Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Human, Angst and Hurt/Comfort, Blood and Injury, F/M, Romance, Some Humor, Unresolved Tension, because this is still a darcy lewis-centric story
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-03-02
Updated: 2019-03-02
Packaged: 2019-11-08 04:00:34
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,444
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17974067
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Tonight_At_Noon/pseuds/Tonight_At_Noon
Summary: Darcy Lewis hasn't seen or heard from Bucky Barnes in seven years. That all changes the night she finds him in an alleyway surrounded by a pool of blood.





	and all the king's horses and all the king's men

**Author's Note:**

> None of this is believable. So many parts of this story are medically inaccurate. But that's the joy of fiction, right? Let all who read this employ some of Coleridge's suspension of disbelief. 
> 
> Lyrics at the beginning are from "Shrike" by Hozier. Title of the chapter is a line from A Knight's Tale.
> 
> Enjoy.

  _words hung above, but never would form/_

_like a cry at the final breath that is drawn/_

_remember me, love, when i'm reborn/_

_as a shrike to your sharp and glorious thorn_

*** * ***

It doesn't hurt as much as he thought it would. It must be the adrenaline coursing through him. The body's natural pain reliever. How fortunate are they to have such a responsive, kind sympathetic nervous system that understands what sorts of things people can and cannot take.

He hears the officer directly behind him, shouting. The muffled words sound to him like _STOP!_ An order which inappropriately makes him smile. He has already come to a stop.

The man starts over. “ _MOTHERFUCKER, I’LL DO IT AGAIN. I WON’T HESITATE! PUT YOUR FUCKING HANDS UP AND GET YOUR KNEES ON THE GROUND!_ ”

He wants to obey. Adrenaline only gets you so far, and already weariness is setting in. But the young officer with the booming, shaky voice who, from the brief glance he got before he started running, looks to be fresh out of the academy, doesn't know what he's doing. He doesn't understand the situation.

 _I’m innocent_ , he wants to say. Well, that's a loaded statement. Here, in this particular situation, with these particular charges stacked against him, he is innocent. He's done nothing wrong tonight. Nothing to warrant the bullet currently lodged just above his hip courtesy of Officer Fresh Face.

They won't listen to him. They won't believe him. The majority of the others scattered the instant the blue and red lights burned their retinas, but the NYPD got lucky tonight. Zola is a few dozen feet behind him with cuffs on his wrists. He hears the squat ringleader being read his rights as he stands with blood soaking his ratty sweatpants, his brain pulsing with which option is best.

Drop to his knees or keep running until he finds her.

If he sinks to the gravelly parking lot floor, he's a dead man. Not literally. They'll treat his wound. Make sure he can walk again. But Zola will throw him under the metaphorical bus without lifting a fucking finger. Just being this close to the fat bastard incriminates him. And he can't go back to jail. Not this time. Not for something he had no hand in orchestrating or carrying out. He's been clean. He's been his PO’s golden child.

Another stint would ruin him.

And maybe the bus won’t be so metaphorical in the end.

Onward it is, then.

Facing the dark, narrow alleyway that leads doubtlessly to a busy street, to bustling people moving through the city at a quarter to midnight, his jittery leg lifts off the ground.

“ _HEY! DON’T FUCKING MOVE A FUCKING INCH, MOTHERFUCKER!_ ”

 _Do they teach creative swearing at the academy_? he wonders blithely, his heart pounding against his ribs. He takes another step, and another, and another, his strides picking up monumental speed for a guy with a bullet in him.

The wind moves past his ears, blocking out the officer’s commands. _Pop pop pop_. Fresh Face’s gun goes off a few more times, metal trash cans and already-shattered windows taking the brunt of the attack, but the second he reaches the alley he knows he's safe from their trajectory.

Fresh Face won't follow him. None of them will. They've got Zola. Biggest bust since Al Capone. Who gives a flying fuck about the limping guy who slipped through their fingers.

Out of the alley, Brooklyn greets him uncaringly. A light breeze picks up the sweat-soaked strands of his hair off of his forehead. The overpowering smell of street vendors hit his nostrils. Groups of twenty-somethings pass him by without so much as a glance. It gets lonely living in a city that doesn't bat its eyes at you sometimes, but on a night like this, he's glad for the apathy.

Turning to the right, he notices suddenly how much pain he is in. Each step douses him in a fresh wave of agony. His stomach twists into knots, wringing out his intestines and sending bile up his throat. Shock. Blood loss. Christ, he wants to lie down on this pavement and go to sleep. Just for a minute. Just until it stops hurting.

No. Inhaling as deep a breath as he can manage, he shakes his head.

No, he can't. He has to move. He has to find her. She isn't far from him now.

*** * ***

There is something about early spring in New York that Darcy Lewis has always loved. The blooming flowers of all different colours. The vibrant green buds just opening on the trees. The buzzing wings of all of the birds happy to get their main food sources back.

Spring equals a fresh start in her mind. Fuck the new year. Everything’s dead on New Year’s Day. But the first weeks of spring—that is the true start of the year. What once was lying frozen in the ground is bursting forth with new life. It's like she can finally breathe again. Like the winter months suffocated her without her realising and now that they've been chased off, her lungs can celebrate.

Darcy smiles at a rounded stray cat waddling towards the alleyway beside her apartment building. Poor thing is probably on her fiftieth litter, but Darcy will phone the local no-kill shelter when she starts seeing a dozen or so kittens with their heads in the dumpster.

“Are you even listening to me?”

Startling, Darcy remembers the reason she stepped outside in the first place. A frustrated pang revives her. “Of course I'm not listening to you,” she says, restarting her pattern of walking up and down the sidewalk.

“Why not? You said you were willing to talk!”

“I said I was willing to talk,” she says, pressing the cell phone against her ear so hard her glasses tilt, “not listen to you sound off a hundred excuses.”

“Babe, I'm so sorry. So, so, so sorry. Don't you believe me?”

“I believe you. But as Rihanna says, you're only sorry you got caught.”

“But it's been so lonely. You were so focused on studying for your test”—

Darcy halts at the mouth of the alley. “Oh, fuck that. Seriously, take that lame excuse and shove it right up your ass. You're the one who decided to cheat, don't put that on me. This is your fault. I mean, do you really expect me to forgive you? To actually take you back?”

He doesn’t respond immediately. “I—yeah, actually, I was hoping that you might. We were good together. _Are_ good together. Don't let a tiny slip up ruin us.”

She laughs. She doesn’t mean to, but it sneaks out. Since she discovered Ian with another girl two weeks ago, she has been cruising through the stages of grief. Acceptance reached her last night, to the relief of both her and her roommate, and it apparently comes with finding everything her ex-boyfriend says ridiculous.

Not even his British accent can save him at this point.

Darcy presses her lips together and faces the long alleyway, her eyes scanning for the pregnant cat. “Why do guys always think they have their cake and eat it too?” she says, cocking her head and squinting as her eyes catch an human-shaped lump splayed beside the dumpster. _Is that a mannequin_?

“What does that phrase even mean? I’ve never understood it!” Ian whines.

“It means,” Darcy says, stepping towards the unidentified mass. A chill wanders down her spine. “It means that you can’t call me your girlfriend and say that you love me when you’re fucking some other woman! It's not a minor slip up, it's a fucking landslide, and it has caused irreparable damage. Goodnight, Ian. Don’t call me again.” She pulls the phone away from her ear and presses the red button on her screen, wishing for the first time since smartphones were invented that she had her old Razr to slap shut.

Her shadow closes in on the body-like shape. Minimal lighting makes it hard to decipher if it’s a CPR dummy or a store window mannequin. To her right, the cat bumps into her leg, making Darcy jump. She scratches between the cat’s ears. Bending slightly at the waist, she straightens her glasses and follows the curve of the object.

She reaches its midsection. The whole thing vibrates.

Darcy’s skin crawls. A sudden coldness enters the alley. The hairs on the back of her neck stand straight up. Fumbling with her phone, she pulls up the lock screen menu and switches on the flashlight, feeling like she's just entered into her very own horror movie.

“Oh, my God!” she breathes, tearing her hand away from the cat and covering her mouth, not caring if she deposits dozens of fleas. “Oh, my God. Oh, my God.”

It isn’t a dummy. It isn’t a mannequin. It’s not a strangely large balloon, or a pile of clothes.

It's a person.

She tries to scream but it’s as if her voice can’t summon the courage to make the right kind of noise. All that spills out of her is a sound that easily could have come out of Wheezy from _Toy Story 2_.

Frantically searching the ground, Darcy notices a dark pool around the figure’s waist. Blood glistens on the concrete. It looks like tar in the yellow light that just barely reaches inside the alleyway from the street.

Darcy takes in a trembling breath and extends her arm towards the person’s shoulder. Dull warmth meets her fingertips. Whoever it is, they’re still alive. She tugs, turning them on their back. They make a grunting sound in protest and Darcy, her tongue feeling like a cotton ball, braves a glance at their face.

She jumps back. At her feet, the cat screeches and flees further into the blackness.

Darcy can't help staring at the person’s sweat-drenched face. Her stomach tightens and convulses, threatening to shoot her intestines upwards. A thousand memories flood her head. One after the other plays in fast-forward on a dim screen. They overwhelm her to the point that she fears she might pass out. Alone with a ghost, Darcy tries and fails to swallow the lump of ragged coal stuck in her throat. Her fucking cotton tongue won't let her.

Without telling her body to do so, she unlocks her phone and dials her roommate’s number. It’s not until she hears their voice that she realises what she’s done.

“Darcy? You there? Is everything okay? It’s Ian, isn’t it. I told you not to pick up when he called, but you never listen to me”—

Finding her voice, Darcy cuts her roommate off. “Steve, shut the fuck up and get down to the alleyway. Now!”

“Darcy, what is it?”

“Now, Steve. I mean it,” she snaps, a sob rising, cutting off her air. Before he can ask more questions, Darcy hangs up, switches off the flashlight, and shoves her phone inside her back pocket.

Even in the darkness, she can tell how pale his face is. Like someone sucked all of the life out of him. Which, judging by the amount of blood, isn’t such a wild comparison. His skin glows with sweat. Or maybe it’s tears. She can’t be sure.

God, she isn’t sure of anything. It’s like the shock has suddenly wiped her mind clean.

What sort of nightmare has she found herself in?

Gravity, or maybe it's shock, yanks her to the ground. Darcy drops to her knees, her hands reaching for the man lying in a puddle of blackish red. She touches his chest with splayed, shaking fingers. The gray long sleeve t-shirt is damp and cool, but every couple of agonising seconds she feels the fabric move with his shallow breaths. And if she concentrates, the weak beat of his heart presses against her fingertips.

He is alive. Barely. But it’s enough.

It’s funny that she should find him like this. Caught between life and death. She has thought of him as dead for so long.

Except it isn't funny at all.

The sound of the apartment entrance door opening and closing followed by hurried footsteps pull Darcy to her feet. She wobbles, turning slowly. Steve approaches warily. His broad shoulders block the alley’s minimal light.

“Darcy, what’s happening? Are you hurt?” He looks at her hands and speeds forward. “You’re covered in blood.”

“It’s not mine. It’s his,” she says. She forces down another sob. Standing aside, Darcy points to the half-dead man. Steve goes perfectly still. “And please, Steve, don’t freak out too much. It’s . . . it’s Bucky. I think he’s been shot, or stabbed. There’s so much blood.”

Swaying on his feet, Steve holds his arms out to steady himself. “You’re lying,” he accuses. “Is that Ian? Did you two make up after all?”

“No, God, Steve, we need to help him,” Darcy says in a rush, coiling her hand around Steve’s outstretched wrist and pulling him towards the body. “Pick him up. We can take him upstairs and call an ambulance.”

With his shoulders no longer absorbing all of the light, a streak of lamplight lines Bucky’s white face.

Steve sways again, but Darcy keeps her clutch on him tight.

“Okay,” Steve says, trusting that it is, in fact, Bucky Barnes lying almost dead in the alley next to their apartment building. He takes a second to gather himself before removing his wrist from Darcy’s hold and bending down to collect the limp man in his arms.

Rising to his feet with the ease of the personal trainer that he is, he backs out of the alley with Darcy, whose body feels as if it is floating on a sulfuric cloud, on his heels.

Up in the dingy, tiny apartment, Darcy tells Steve to remain by the front door while she grabs various towels that she doesn’t mind staining with blood. The linen closet in the only bathroom in their apartment opens wide and offers the shaking girl a waft of lavender. She inhales the scent, though it does nothing to calm her. Heart still thrashing, head still pounding, throat still burning with unformed screams and reprimands, she pulls out an armful of towels.

 _This isn’t happening_ , she tells herself. _I am going to walk out there and it is just going to be Steve_ . _There will be no blood_ . _No Bucky_.

Wishful thinking. Stepping into the open space of the apartment, Steve is still by the door. Still holding a whimpering Bucky Barnes tightly to his chest. Blood still dribbles to the wood floor.

Darcy propels herself forward and starts placing towels in the area between the makeshift living room and the kitchen.

“I see you using those towels all of the time,” Steve says, coming over and laying Bucky carefully down. A laboured groan sparks from his mouth.

In the apartment, with more light, it’s impossible to deny that this is happening. There is Bucky Barnes on her floor, his wet shirt and joggers sticking to the red towels. The dark stubble poking through his cheeks only make him look more pale. More gaunt. More dead.

Getting to her knees, not at all sure what the next move is, Darcy says, “Yeah, they’re the towels I use when I’m on my period.”

“Oh. Okay.” Steve joins her on the other side of Bucky. He grabs his knees. His knuckles go white. “What do we do now? Call an ambulance?”

Darcy hears him, sort of, but doesn't respond. Her eyes catch on a tear in Bucky's sweatpants. The soaked fabric by his right hip is frayed. “Here,” she says, motioning to the area.

“Here?” Steve leans forward. “What is it?”

“I think it might be where he got hurt.” She is surprised by the calmness of her voice. Internally, she is shouting, thrashing, drowning in her own tears. Of course, if she were to hear herself on playback, she would probably sound exactly like an angry bear.

Darcy touches the area around the hole. Oblivious, Bucky doesn't even flinch.

“What are you doing?”

“If we know where he's hurt,” she says, pinching the waistband of the sweats and moving the right side down as gently as possible, “they'll be able to help him better at the hospital.”

Slowly, Darcy reveals a bloodied, circular wound just above the elastic of Bucky’s once-white boxer briefs. Her hands shake as she lifts up his shirt, and it takes her a few moments of staring blearily at the blood bubbling against his white skin to realise she isn’t breathing.

“Shit,” Steve says. Were Darcy not in the midst of an internal panic attack, she would make a big deal about the swearing, something Steve rarely does. But she can’t blame him right now for blanking on his good guy persona. “Darce, that doesn’t look good.”

It really doesn’t. While it’s not bleeding so much, she remembers reading in a news article about a shooting at a charity baseball game that injuries to the pelvic region are bad.

“He’s been shot,” she concludes, her voice sounding miles away to her own ears. She touches the area surrounding the wound. Behind the red, there is a slight glimmer of gold. “Steve, get me some hand towels, then call 911. I . . . I don’t know how long he’s got with all of the blood loss.”

Steve releases his hold on his knees and starts getting to his feet, but the entire room freezes when Bucky’s eyelids suddenly snap open. Darcy gasps, her hand retreating from the open gash.

“No,” Bucky croaks, his frenzied eyes scanning the apartment. They land on Darcy, and another wave of sickness douses her. “Don’t call 911.”

“Don’t call—Bucky, you’re not thinking clearly,” Darcy alleges, a swarm of battling emotions crowding her chest. He’s alive. He’s talking. But he’s dying. “Steve, call 911,” she orders.

“Steve,” Bucky says weakly, still staring at Darcy, “don’t call 911.”

Collapsing to the floor again, Steve lifts his shoulders. “What should I do?”

Darcy opens her mouth to again tell him to call for an ambulance, but Bucky starts talking before she can get a word out. “I’ve been shot,” he says, as if they didn’t already know that part. His eyes go between Darcy and Steve. “The bullet is still in there. I need one of you to remove it.”

“What?” Darcy blurts. She is surprised by how much anger she can feel towards this bullet-ridden man. If he weren’t already dying, she would kill him. “Goddamnit, Bucky, what the fuck happened?”

“I’ll explain everything,” he promises, “when you’ve gotten the bullet out.”

“Why does it have to be one of us?” she says, pointing to herself and then Steve. “Why can’t we get an actual doctor to do it?”

“All I need,” he says forcefully, and Darcy swears he turns an even paler shade of white, “is this bullet out of me, a place to rest for the night, and then I’ll be out of your hair by morning.”

Darcy cannot believe what she is hearing. “Out of our hair _by morning_? You’re out of your fucking mind. You’re on the run, aren’t you? The police are looking for you. You’d rather die on our floor than go to the fucking hospital.”

“Well, yeah,” he says with too much casualness. “Hospitals have to report all bullet wounds to the police.”

“Darcy, you can do this.” Her and Bucky look up at Steve. “You took that training course, right? You’re practically a nurse!”

“Oh, no.” Darcy shakes her head violently. “I took one fucking first aid course years ago to qualify as a helper at an old people’s home. And I took it for nothing, because they didn't end up hiring me!”

“But didn’t they teach you how to deal with this stuff?” Steve asks.

“Right, I forgot!” she exclaims. “They walked us through bullet extractions just after the section on reattaching sawed-off limbs.”

“As much fun as I am having bleeding out in your apartment,” Bucky says, “I will need one of you to shut the fuck up and get this thing out of me. I’ll walk you through it. Trust me, it’s not as hard as it seems.”

“Trust you,” Darcy says, her throat swelling. “I haven’t done that since we were eighteen.”

Bucky has the gall to smile. His mouth pulls to the right all while he’s lying on her floor mere minutes from slipping into Death’s arms. “Let’s pretend we’re eighteen, then. Find something to get the bullet out. It’s a shallow wound, so whatever it is doesn’t have to be long. Next, get something to sew it up, and some gauze and tape. You can do this. Or, you can't, and I die."

She wants to say something back. Some quip is souring her tongue, but she swallows it back down. She has learned in the last twenty minutes that there is an enormous difference between pretending someone is dead and the reality of that person actually being dead. As monumentally pissed off as she has been at Bucky over the last seven years, her soul would break if he were really gone. Gone with no chance of him popping up in an alleyway bleeding profusely from a fucking gunshot wound. 

Wordlessly, Darcy rises, ignoring Bucky's attempt to reach for her, and heads into the bathroom where she keeps her minimal stash of beauty supplies. Everything is stowed in a three-drawer storage unit. She pulls open the top drawer. A red lipstick won't help Bucky at this point, nor will black eyeliner. The second drawer isn't much help, either. Tiny bandages aren't enough to plug a bullet hole. 

Darcy slams the drawer shut and smacks the top of the unit with an open hand. 

 _God fucking dammit_! she shouts internally, hitting the unit once more and revelling in the sharp bite. Her swollen throat finally closes, blocking her supply of air. Tears, old and new and bitter and hurt and painful, spill onto the tiled floor. Her glasses fog.

Her mind feels as though it is collapsing inward. As if she is imploding, readying herself to burst inward and become nothing more than a speck of dust. What the fuck is happening out there? Who does Bucky think he is, waltzing back into their lives in this manner? He's lucky she doesn't want him to die. 

Slapping the tears off of her face, Darcy straightens herself in the mirror above the sink and opens the third drawer. Inside, she locates a pair of sturdy, long-ish tweezers and the tiny sewing kit her mother gave her when Darcy moved out. Its seal, almost a decade later, remains intact. In Steve's bag of medical supplies for when he injures himself working out, she retrieves a packet of gauze. This will have to do. With her measly handful of equipment, Darcy emerges from the bathroom. Bucky and Steve end whatever conversation they were having the second her feet touch the hardwood. 

"This was all I could find," she says, holding up the tweezers and sewing kit. She takes rickety steps towards where Bucky lies without his sweatpants or long-sleeved shirt. For a split second, she is distracted by tattoo covering his whole left arm. 

"It'll work," Bucky says, somehow sounding more alert than before.

Returning to her spot on Bucky's right side, she lays out the supplies next to a hand towel and a bowl filled with a strongly scented solution that Steve must have grabbed. 

"I'm going to be getting the sofa ready while you work on this," Steve says. "Good luck."

Good luck is right.

Darcy nods, scanning the wound again. That gold piece must be the bullet. It really is right there. She could pull it out with her fingers. 

"That bowl's got isopropyl alcohol in it. For sterilisation," Steve mentions on his way to the linen closet. 

"Got it. Sterilisation," she says, picking up the tweezers and dipping them inside the solution. She braves a look at Bucky's face. Even though he's twenty-five, he looks no older than ten at this moment. A frightened little boy trying to be brave. He looked the same at the funeral. Maybe she'll be able to help him more tonight than she was able to then. "Alright, doc," she says, "walk me through this."

*** * ***

He's got more colour to him now. Dressed in Steve's clothes, he slurps at the microwave soup Darcy made for him. If she didn't know him, she'd say he was fine. Even with the bullet wound. But she does know him, and she spots those small twitches. Those winces. 

She isn't convinced he'll make it through the night. That thought makes her chest hurt.

"You need to keep your legs elevated," she says once he's finished with the soup. She points to the extra pillows Steve found. 

"Yes, ma'am." Bucky lies back on the ratty sofa and places his legs atop the pile. He smiles lazily at her, but she catches the minute flinch that follows. 

"Right, well, as much as I would love to stay up all night making sure you're okay, I have probably the biggest exam in my life taking place in less than twelve hours, so I am going to head to bed." She gets off of the couch and looks over at Steve washing the dishes. "Goodnight, Steve."

"'Night, Darce. I'll keep an eye on him."

"Hey," Bucky says, "don't I get a goodnight? And what's this big exam I'm only hearing about now?"

Darcy stops midway to her room and turns around. "Oh, would you have rather I shared the information while you were bleeding out on the floor?" she says sardonically. "Goodnight, Bucky. Try real hard not to die."

"I'll do my best."

Rolling her eyes, Darcy makes her way to her room. Her chest aches badly. She'll have to work on not dying in the night too. All of this shock can't be good for someone, especially the night before a huge test. Students are already under so much pressure. Add an almost dead ex-boyfriend to the mix and Darcy's surprised her heart hasn't erupted yet. 

Before closing her door, she hears Steve say to Bucky, "It's the LSAT. She's been studying her butt off for it."

Alone in her tiny bedroom that leaves no room for pacing, she strips herself of her bloodied, sweat-infused clothes and changes into an oversized t-shirt. She sits on the edge of her bed and buries her hands in her hair.

 _You need sleep_ , she tells herself. 

 _He'll be okay_.

 _He's Bucky_.  _He's always okay_.

But that isn't true at all, and she knows it. 


End file.
